Saturday, December 14, 2013

That's about it

Here we are. Last night in my apartment here in Portugal.
I feel miserably sad.
I had so many troubles with this apartment, the rain filtering inside the windows and flooding my kitchen, the bad landlord, the continuous reparations needed.
But I loved this place. The ocean view. The possibility to walk or run on the beach, next to the beach whenever I wanted.
And that's it. I am leaving. After tomorrow, very early in the morning.
I can't help but thinking of my mood and my hopes and all what was going on inside me when I arrived here two years ago. It seems yesterday, and instead it is not and so so many things happened in these two years.
When I arrived here, I was not even together with my husband. We had broken up since more than six months and I honestly didn't consider a reconciliation and getting back together a possibility, although we always stayed in touch.
When I arrived here, I thought that I would find a way to have at least a friendship with the olandesino. I couldn't have been wronger.
When I arrived here, I was terribly sad for having left my friend and the working group in Montpellier, but also full of hope for my life and my work here. I thought that I could make friends outside work and have a full life here. I sadly didn't make any close friends....I honestly didn't even try so hard, as it took me one year to figure out my life here and adapt and then I basically got engaged and knew I would move again. But I anyway met people I like a lot here and that in one or another way I will think about even from far.
Nothing went as I saw or imagined in my head, except for the fact that I already knew from the first time that I would have loved this little city where I decided to live.
I can't imagine myself starting over again, in another country, in another city. I don't know how many times I moved around from place to place and had to start over again. And every time, it takes me almost a year to just get settled in a place and even longer to start making friends and having a life...and then as in this case, it is time to leave again.

I feel that in the last months I am trying to block everything inside myself, the fear, the sadness, the anguishing of having to move again and start over in another place with another culture, other people, another life. I am tired of this. I was tired of this two years ago, when I came here in Portugal and I promised myself that I wouldn't move again unless was for something stable where I could settle for many years and have a life, with friends, routine, my things, where I could feel rooted.
Instead, two years after, all my stuff is in boxes again, spread between Italy, my husband's apartment, the future place where I will live, and somewhere in between these places, traveling.

I am fully aware that I didn't need this change again. I am also aware that it could never have worked between my husband and I if I would have stayed where I am. I guess that when I decided to marry him, I knew that I would have had to move again. Surely, I was hoping to move with him and not to move to be alone again in a new place, just closer to him. But I would never give up my work and I would never want him to give up what he has for me without something to do that he likes.
Someone told me that "I want it all" and this is just not possible in life.
I don't feel that I want it all. I don't have my family close to me and I don't have my friends near me.
I just have a job doing what I like (and I hope to like doing it in this new place and to find a pleasant working environment) and a husband closer by than now. I understand that it is a lot and much more that what other people have, but it is certainly not having it all and I made a lot of sacrifices for my work and my personal life.

I just know that I will miss here, this little village, the view I have from the windows of my apartment, running along the ocean, the wind and the waves...I will miss all this so so much.

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